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Comment by graiz | Hacker News Reader

Twitter is just being stupid. They could easily offer a "pro" version of twitter that would give end-users verified accounts, added stats, better photos, wide open use of the API for 3rd party apps, etc.

Some calculations... - 500 million accounts. - 1% conversion (they could 2% or higher) - 5 million conversions - $50/year Wooo hoo. $250 million. Ok, not a billion but not a bad start, all without burning developers or free users.

Charge businesses for business level accounts and analytics and you could get another $250M.

Twitter's problem isn't just a "Now" problem it's a management team that's following Facebook on their path to ad failure.

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Twitter dies if they lose 98% of their users. So many people would leave that you'd never be able to keep even 1%.

Watching Twitter and app.net over the next couple of years should be fascinating. Twitter can't start charging, but app.net is starting there. If they get 1% of Twitter's population, they are a huge success. And Twitter just gifted them a lot of potential developers.

I don't see what would drive away customers. If paying for your twitter account was optional, why would free users stop using the service?

Twitter and Facebook could learn a lot from the Free-to-Play video game market. Service is free, being "special" costs money.

I think that depends a lot on how it's marketed. If it's touted as something that regular users ought to have access to as well, it might tick off a lot of people, but it doesn't have to be like that.

Although I wouldn't be surprised if the knuckleheads at Twitter botched it.

I agree. Think of the way Reddit Gold works. It doesn't really take anything away from the Reddit experience, but it does give folks some additional value that those that feel like paying for it, do. If Twitter just adds features for the premium side, and doesn't strip current features from free users, it should be easy to make that transition.

And if they get 1% of twitter's population, it may well be a MUCH higher percentage of the subset of twitter's population that's willing to pay for something.

Twitter can't start charging

They could easily start charging for additional services as the comment above suggessted - if they make it a 'Pro' plan and leave normal accounts alone, there's no incentive at all for people to leave, and yet they make money from their most active/interested users. There are plenty of extras they could offer on top of the basic service for a charge.

That goes double for business accounts - I'm sure most businesses would pay some small subscription for verification, syndication, the chance to advertise (in clearly separated areas) and other features now it has critical mass.

That's a much better plan than polluting all of the users' streams with advertising they don't want a la FaceBook, which will lead to a mass exodus. Adding advertising to the users' streams is absolutely the worst thing Twitter can do, and yet it seems they're actively working towards that with their recent changes.

Interesting take, although I think that there's more at play here. I agree that they could start charging for the API and add premium accounts, but all of those major changes runs a big risk of irrevocably altering their service. Whether that's for the better or worse is up for debate.

I'm very curious to see where it goes from here, but was mostly intrigued by the parallel I see to small startups. Thanks for the comment :)

Assuming this "pro" account would be ad-free, that would devalue their ad business. BMW isn't going to pay for promoted tweets if their target demographic won't see them. So you're left with junk food ads, which are fine, but not nearly as profitable.

> Charge businesses for business level accounts and analytics and you could get another $250M.

https://business.twitter.com/en/advertise/analytics/

Charge individuals for personal analytics and... ???

http://www.twittertakemymoney.com/

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